by Simon Mayo
‘Prickin’ ’er, like most nights, then!’
As the laughter rolled, Elizabeth jumped up and took her husband by the arm, escorting him from the stage.
‘It was the right and the brave thing to do, Thomas, even if we did get abuse. I’m proud of you.’
The colour had returned to the Agent’s cheeks but he was silent as they returned to the house.
3.3
Wednesday, 11 January
Block Four
HABS, SAM AND eighteen other Block Four inmates from the work party had been put in the rapidly cleared cockloft. Joe had to be admitted, too. There hadn’t been any discussion about it, just an acknowledgement of the obvious: you couldn’t quarantine the whole of Seven’s cockloft just for one man. Joe sat cross-legged against the stage, his hands on his knees, palms up.
‘Suddenly, we’re equal,’ said Habs, slumping against the stage. ‘Sick white men allowed. Healthy white men: keep out.’
They were just twenty-one sailors, after all, terrified of dying. Four oil lamps on the stage drew each man in turn to examine their hands, each blister-free verdict greeted with a grim nod or relieved sigh. Food, grog, tobacco and pipes were left at the doors; the yarning took a predictable turn.
‘We was docked in Madrid few years back,’ said one, clouds billowing from his freshly lit pipe. ‘On the Matchmaker outta Boston. Soon as we got ashore, we all smelled somethin’ like rotten flesh, and this crazy woman come runnin’ at us, half naked, covered in red spots and the like. She was screamin’ somethin’ we didn’t recognize, but we turned right round and ran back to the ship. Whatever it was killed thousands, and we shouldn’ta even been in the harbour. We unloaded and got the hell outta there. We got lucky.’
A few of the men whistled their agreement.
‘Damn right!’ called a man shrouded in a tarp. ‘I survived the influenza two winters ago, off Nova Scotia. It took some o’ the younger boys, mind, worst fevers I ever saw.’
There was some silence then, followed by a hawking cough and an extravagant spit.
‘I got syphilis in Lisbon back in ’10,’ said the coughing man.
‘Uh-huh. Me, too,’ said another voice. ‘Mine was in San Domingo. We all got the pox in San Domingo.’
‘That pox don’t count,’ said Habs. ‘You have to go lookin’ for that one. This pox finds you where you are. And maybe it’ll find us here still.’
In between the yarning, they heard the suffering. Magrath had ordered all the illegal stoves in all the blocks to be extinguished and the windows unblocked, decreeing that the uncirculated air was in large part to blame for the spread of the disease. As a result, the hundred yards between Block One and Block Four melted away and the agonies of their neighbours cut through the thoughts of the men in Four and animated their fear.
‘Ev’ry time I hear that sound,’ said Sam, pointing through the window towards One, ‘that caterwaulin’, I look around here. I look at all o’ you. And none o’ you is sick. Not like that sailor – may God have mercy on his soul – is sick. So maybe we’ll survive, after all.’
‘Sometimes,’ said a white-haired sailor, shivering in the new draughts that had been encouraged into all the buildings, ‘sometimes, it sounds like the whole o’ One is dyin’. If I end up at the gates o’ Hell, it ain’t gonna sound no worse than that.’
Another inmate stepped up to a window and leaned out. ‘We hear you!’ he shouted. ‘God bless you all!’
Within seconds, others took up the cry and from every prison block came shouts of sympathy and encouragement.
‘Any singers here?’ asked Joe, looking around. ‘Anyone in your choir?’ The man who’d told the influenza story, a round-faced man with a thin covering of grey hair, raised his hand.
‘Me,’ he said. ‘Just me. Joshua.’
‘Do you know any songs for the sick, Joshua?’
‘Sure I do. We all do. They might not be in the choir, but they all know the songs.’
‘Of course,’ said Joe. ‘Pardon my ignorance. Can you sing loud?’
Joshua laughed. ‘You kiddin’ me?’
Joe nodded. ‘Loud enough to reach One?’
Joshua slowly got to his feet. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘seein’ as we ain’t too sick ourselves, let’s see if we can administer to the needy and sufferin’.’ He stood by the first window. ‘Wind’s a nor’easter. Blow the song straight to ’em.’
Joshua started a marching beat, both feet stomping the floor in turn. All the men scrambled for the windows, clapping and stomping as they went. Joshua, leaning through the window, turned his head to the rooftops.
‘Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around,’ he sang, his full baritone loud enough to fill the cockloft and bounce off the roof of Block Three.
‘Turn me around,’ sang the men.
‘Ain’t gonna let nobody,’ led Joshua.
‘Turn me around, turn me around,’ repeated the men. Habs nodded at Joe, who was learning fast. He’d never heard the song before, but he understood a work song when he heard it.
Joshua was finding his range now. Still stomping, he coughed and cleared his throat. From somewhere, he found more volume.
‘I say I’m gonna hold out,’ he sang.
‘Hold out, hold out,’ repeated his chorus.
‘I say I’m gonna hold out.’
Then they sang together: ‘Until my change comes.’
They carried on stamping their feet, but before the third verse the crunching sound of boots on timber grew. Puzzlement was replaced by wonder. The extra feet were from downstairs. Suddenly, there were hundreds of boots hitting the floor – the noise was astonishing.
Habs and Joe leaned out of a window, only to see faces staring right back up at them.
‘Joshua! They’re waiting for you. You lead!’ shouted Joe, still clapping.
Joshua nodded and leaned out further.
‘I promise the Lord that I would …’
And what sounded like the whole of Four sang. A broadside of benediction.
Later that night, with most of the cockloft asleep, Habs and Joe lay on a mattress, listening again to the sounds of men in torment.
‘D’you think they heard the singin’?’ whispered Habs.
‘Must have,’ said Joe. ‘Couldn’t have missed it. And the clapping after. Went on and on.’
‘Reckon the whole damn place was joinin’ in,’ said Habs.
They lay silent again.
‘But they’re still dying,’ said Joe.
‘Sure sounds like it. You feel all right?’
Joe propped himself up with an elbow. ‘I ask myself that every second,’ he said. ‘I inspect my hands every second. We look at each other’s faces every second. All the time. I know every inch of your forehead – everyone’s forehead – mapped every spot that we don’t need to be scared about. Worst thing about the night is that we can’t see what’s happening.’
‘Or not happenin’.’
‘Agreed.’
‘You inspectin’ me now, Mr Hill?’
In the near-darkness, Joe studied his friend. Rough blankets pulled high, only his head exposed to the frosty night air, Habs’s eyes were closed and deep lines were etched into his forehead. Maybe he was frowning, maybe he had just aged. Joe couldn’t tell. He counted the days since they had met. It was just twelve. Not even two weeks had passed since he’d marched under that hideous arch and announced the end of the war. What cheer remained in him came, still, from that proclamation and, he realized, the man lying next to him.
‘I said, you inspectin’ me?’
Joe leaned closer.
‘Not officially,’ he said.
‘Do I pass?’
Joe lay back down alongside his friend, their wrapped bodies close enough to feel each other’s warmth.
‘You’ll probably do,’ he said.
3.4
Tuesday, 17 January
Block One
ELIZABETH SHORTLAND STOOD alongside a hammock, her hands rest
ing on the canvas and rocking it gently. When her patient closed his eyes – he had said his name was Gramm – she covered her mouth with her arm to mask her nausea. She had soothing ointments and bandages but nothing that could stop his rash spreading. The pustules had become as hard as a thousand beads in his skin. When they leaked, crusted and flaked, she had nothing for that either.
The outbreak had unfolded in a series of waves, eventually claiming most of Block One.
There were protestations, but Magrath had reordered the block his own way. The dead and dying were put on the ground floor, the sick on the first and the few healthy remaining in the cockloft. Elizabeth was in what had once been, according to a nailed-on sign, Mess Nine on the ground floor. She blocked out the hellish noises of the diseased, their crying and their prayers, choosing instead the creaking hammock and the shouted commands of the newly inoculated soldier-orderlies. There were already five bodies by the door, wrapped in sheets and stacked like flour bags; they would be gone to the Dead House soon enough. Gramm, she knew, would join them before the day was out. Until a month ago, she had seen only two dead bodies – her grandmother when she collapsed at home, and a prison suicide the previous summer – now, she expected at least twelve a day.
‘Mr Gramm, I have water if you’re thirsty,’ she said. She might have added, ‘It’s all I have and I’m sorry I can do no more.’ He swallowed and winced, trying to speak. She leaned in close.
‘Pray for me,’ he breathed. ‘Pray for me.’
She nodded. ‘I will remember you in my prayers.’
A slight shake of his head. ‘No, you must pray for me now.’
Elizabeth thought she understood; he hadn’t the time to wait.
Magrath had given her a count of five hundred and fifty-three smallpox cases in One, with another two hundred in the hospital. It was an epidemic. Even now, she could see a score of patients awaiting her, but she rested a hand on Gramm’s shoulder. She would pray for him, she would pray for all of them. In spite of her doubts, her feelings of inadequacy, the words came easily. They were the words of her upbringing.
‘Remember not, Lord, our iniquities,’ she said, ‘nor the iniquities of our forefathers: Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.’ Gramm’s lips cracked an amen. She found she had more. They were, she knew, words for a priest, but, from her lips at that moment, they seemed to have power.
‘Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit thee,’ she said. ‘The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace, both now and evermore. Amen.’ Gramm was still now and Elizabeth stepped away. ‘Amen,’ she said for him, and moved on to the next hammock.
Tilson was raging. Bound with rope, he convulsed and kicked against his restraints, the hammock swaying precariously. Magrath stepped away, Elizabeth appearing at his side. ‘He has a fire inside him,’ she said. Magrath nodded. ‘And we cannot put it out, Elizabeth, cannot get close.’
Tilson’s face seemed to have disappeared, his skin now host to a hundred sharply raised orbs. His hands and feet, too, looked fit to burst.
‘But we have to get close,’ she said, and stepped towards the hammock. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Tilson,’ called Magrath.
Elizabeth grabbed one side of the hemp with both hands, and the wild rocking ceased. The crazed shouting calmed to a babble of unrecognizable words. She steeled herself, then looked directly into his bloodied, contorted eyes and smiled.
‘Mr Tilson,’ she said, her words fighting his delirium, ‘I’m Elizabeth Shortland, and Dr Magrath is here, too. You are not forgotten, and we are doing all we can for you.’
Magrath handed her the jug of water and she dribbled some over Tilson’s swollen, contorted lips. He swallowed some, coughed some up, then spoke again. This time, she recognized the words, but they came fast.
‘My Sarah is here somewhere,’ he said, his voice thin and rasping. ‘She needs me … she needs all of us … we must go to her … do you know her?’
‘Mr Tilson …’ began Elizabeth, but Tilson wasn’t to be stopped.
‘You must take me to her, she has gold, she has everything, have you seen her? Take me to her.’ The rocking was starting again, and Magrath stepped up to steady the hammock.
‘Hallucinations,’ said Magrath softly. ‘A wandering of the mind. Come, there are others who need us. Many hundreds …’
‘Can he hear me?’ she asked, holding on to Magrath’s sleeve.
‘I couldn’t say, Elizabeth, but let us assume that he can.’
Under the ropes, Tilson was beginning to twist and writhe again, his clothes tearing, his skin splitting.
‘I want Sarah!’ he screamed. ‘I need her now!’ Elizabeth had seen enough. She turned to Magrath.
‘I am vaccinated, yes?’ She saw his startled look.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I am safe?’
‘Yes, Elizabeth, but …’
‘What’s his first name?’
‘I don’t know.’
A voice from a nearby bunk. ‘It’s Jonathan. Jonathan Tilson.’
She reached out and laid her hand on Tilson’s forehead, the beads of his disease hard against her gentle touch.
‘I’m here, Jon,’ she said. ‘It’s Sarah. I’m here. You’re going to be all right. Everything will be all right.’
The writhing slowed, the hammock calmed, and the storm passed.
‘You sleep now,’ she said. Tilson closed his eyes.
And Elizabeth found she was saying her prayers again.
By the end of January, when new staff and supplies arrived, the epidemic appeared to have peaked. As more inmates took the vaccine, the death count started to fall. From a peak of thirty in one day, it tailed away to five, to one, and then, finally, a whole day, 7 February, passed without a fatality. By the end of the epidemic, they had buried two hundred and two American sailors.
‘When is it over, George?’ whispered Elizabeth in their cupboard office between wards A and B. ‘When can we say we are done with it all?’ They had both sunk to the floor, exhausted, barely able to speak, move or think.
‘When the last scab is gone,’ he replied quietly. ‘But we will not be truly free of it. Many who have survived will lose their sight; some are blind already. So it will always be here, Elizabeth.’ In the silence that followed, she heard him sigh so heavily she thought he might be expiring.
‘Containing it to one block was astonishing,’ she said. ‘It was a miracle it never spread.’
‘It was science, Elizabeth. It was medicine. If more had taken the vaccine early, or we’d had more supplies, who knows how many we’d have saved?’
She reached for his hand. ‘When this is all over, George,’ she whispered. ‘When this bloody disease is gone and the whole bloody war is over, then everyone will leave. But if you go, if you are posted somewhere else, the thought of …’
Magrath had never seen Elizabeth cry before, but now she sobbed with such fury, such intensity, he feared they might be discovered. He buried her head on his shoulder as her whole body convulsed with grief. She wept for the dead, the blind, the scarred. She wept for her marriage, her son and for her own limitless incarceration.
3.5
Saturday, 11 February
Block Four
‘WE GETTIN’ THE bread, that’s what’s happenin’.’ Sam’s words registered slowly, and Habs felt his hammock pushed harder. ‘It’s our watch.’
‘I can’t get up if the ship is rollin’,’ he murmured.
‘I reckon you can,’ said Sam. ‘We all gettin’ bread. No reason you gettin’ off, cuz.’ He rocked the hammock again, then tried rousing Ned.
‘You, too, Mr Penny. I ain’t gettin’ it all on my own.’ The lamplighter wrapped himself in the folds of a thin blanket.
‘You know, I can’t never
hear you, on account o’ my ear goin’ missin’,’ mumbled Ned. ‘Anyways, I can see it’s still dark. And man has no use or purpose until there is light to guide his path …’
‘He does if there’s bread to be fetched and it’s his turn to fetch it,’ said Sam. ‘Mess rules, and you know it.’ Habs could hear the exasperation in his cousin’s voice and opened his eyes. First, he checked his hands, front and back, a habit he guessed would now be with him for ever. Tattooed fingers, four rings and no smallpox blisters. He looked up. Sam was leaning on a stanchion, already working his clay pipe hard, clouds of grey smoke billowing into the thick, fetid air. He caught Habs looking.
‘Can’t be last, cuz,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘If we come back with nothin’ but ship’s biscuits, King Dick’ll go crazy.’
Each morning, the bread rations were available from the two storehouses that stood in the top corners of the market square. Each mess sent out enough men to collect the rations; one and a half pounds of bread per person was one white loaf each and, with twenty or more men in each mess, it was a job for three. The local contractor usually delivered enough for the whole prison, but occasionally there would be a shortfall and the stragglers, the last messes in the queue, were left with the hated ship’s biscuits, the hardtack that had cost so many sailors their teeth.
Habs slid from the hammock, pulled on his boots and jacket then dragged Ned from his slumbers. By the time the turnkeys arrived, Habs, Sam and Ned were among the first at the doors. The icy winds took their breath.
‘Guide me, Habs,’ said Ned, clasping his shoulder. ‘My eyes has to stay shut till the storehouse.’
‘But you’ll miss the beauty of a Dartmoor sunrise.’ Habs shivered as they joined the shuffling groups of men now tumbling from all seven blocks and heading for the square.
‘Let me guess,’ said Ned, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘The sky is grey, the clouds are grey, all the prisons are grey, the English are grey, the coffee’ll be grey and even the bread will be goddamn grey. How’d I do?’ He opened his eyes, looked around, nodded and shut them again. ‘Perfect score,’ he said.
